Medicaments, such as pharmaceutical products have to be kept and stored in a predefined way. Many medicaments require for instance constant refrigeration and must not be kept or stored above a predefined maximum temperature. Moreover, some medicaments are rather sensitive to bright illumination and should therefore be kept in a rather dark or dimmed environment. Other medicaments are rather sensitive to humidity and should be therefore not exposed to humidity.
Depending on their exposure to ambient parameters, such like temperature, illumination and humidity, particular medicaments may become subject to an irreversible degradation process. It is therefore of importance to label such medicaments with a best before date, after which the medicament should no longer be used and applied. The best before date is typically provided on a secondary or primary packaging of the medicament. The best before date has to be determined in such a way, that the medicament can still be used at the given date given that it has been transported and stored appropriately. The best before date, prior to which the medicament should be used is calculated and determined on the basis of the general degradation properties of said medicament and its time of production.
However, if a medicament which is sensitive to heat and illumination is always kept in a dimmed and/or refrigerated environment, the medicament may be of further use even after passing of the best before date. However, since it is generally not possible or impractical to non-destructively test the medicament, respective amounts of medicaments will be discarded after a lapse of their best before date, simply as a precaution and irrespective of the actual constitution of the medicament.
In another scenario, the medicament might be temporarily exposed to inadmissible ambient parameters and may therefore exhibit premature degradation even prior to its best before date. Since such degradation of a medicament may not be discernible by medical staff or end users, there exists a certain danger or hazard, that a prematurely degradated medicament is administered to a patient. Such administering may constitute a hazard to the health of the patient.
In the rare event, a particular medicament turns out to constitute a health risk, as a precaution, those medicaments that where produced in the same batch have to be traced and have to be discarded for safety reasons. Hence, up to now there exists no sufficient and reliable monitoring system to determine the actual state and usability of individual medicaments in a non-destructive way.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a simple and cost-efficient sensor arrangement allowing to monitor ambient parameters to which a medicament and/or its first or secondary packaging has been exposed to. The sensor arrangement should be able to provide qualitative and quantitative information about the actual status and constitution of the medicament. Moreover, the sensor arrangement should be adapted to monitor physical and analytical parameters on the basis of negligible power consumption or even without power consumption.